The Moonies reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Moonies

The term "Moonies" refers to members of Sun Myung Moon's controversial religious and political Unification Movement. Members prefer the term "Unificationist".

The term was created by U.S. journalists in the mid 1970s, as as a shortened form of the earlier media-created term "Moonchildren". No relation to Cat Stevens's song Moonshadow has been proven, although an urban legend popular among Unificationists claims that Cat Stevens studied the Divine Principle and incorporated some of the church's themes in his rock music.

After some years of going along with the media's use of the term, the Unificationists did an about face in the late 1980s, when they asked major media organizations to stop referring to them as "moonies," on the grounds that it is demeaning. The term has since fallen into disuse, except as a pejorative.

See also:

• Unification Church

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The term "moonie", when written with a lowercase "m", can refer to a fan of the anime Sailor Moon. This meaning of the term may be more common on the Internet.

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